Teaching behaviour in small steps

At the start of October I was fortunate enough to visit Dixons Trinity Academy with my Principal, Nick Wells. There was an abundance of excellent insight about culture and communication to take away which Nick has written about on his blog. In addition, something that has stayed with me was Dixons’ consistent implementation of Doug Lemov’s 100% backed up by Be Seen Looking and Least Invasive Interventions.

“Ok, everyone time’s up, get ready to stop writing, in 3, stop writing, 2, pens down on desks, and 1, tracking me.”

Above is a type of countdown script I have seen used in countless lessons over the past few years. Usually, and with most classes, it works efficiently and enables us to Brighten Lines between students’ independent writing and getting prepared to listen to the next set of instructions.

“Ok, everyone time’s up, get ready to stop writing, in 3, stop writing, 2, pens down on desks, and 1, tracking me. Waiting for everyone to stop writing and put pens down. Student y, why am I still waiting for you to stop writing? Student x, you need to have your pen on the desk just like everyone else has. That’s a warning now, Student y, because you have not followed any of my instructions…etc.”

But, sometimes, with some groups, it doesn’t have the desired impact. There are a handful of students still writing, a couple have stopped writing but are fiddling with something on the desk and one has put their pen down but is staring out of the window. Suddenly, a whole new set of instructions need to be given, slowing the pace down and making the lesson feel disjointed. This moment can quickly lead to a teacher spinning the plates of behaviour management. It is also more likely to lead to a situation where frustration rises and the school behaviour system is being applied, when with some preemption, we could teach the behaviour we want to see more effectively.

Tom Bennett has written extensively about behaviour needing to be a curriculum that is explicitly taught. Tom also reinforced during United Learning ‘Best in Everyone’ conference that the forming of classroom norms must never be left to chance. With that in mind, it makes sense to consider Rosenshine’s ‘Principles of Instruction’ about how we best go about explicitly teaching behaviour.

If I reflect on a class who are consistently not responding quickly to the initial script above, I wonder if it because their working memory is being overloaded. They are in the middle of a task, thinking hard about what they are writing, and then, suddenly, a series of quick-fire instructions are then given.

100% allows us to teach behaviour in small steps. Give one instruction with the implicitly stated expectation everyone must do it, and then not moving on until every student has met the expectation. One step, mastery, the next step, mastery, and repeat – leading to a much smoother lesson flow.

Get ready to stop writing…

100% of us stop writing now.

100% pens down.

100% tracking me.

This script has two objectives. It is normalising that every single student should be following the instruction and it breaks a series of instructions into chunks that can be completed one at a time.

Again, sometimes not every student will complete each instruction on cue. However, we want to maintain the flow of the lesson and minimise any disjointedness. Our first strategy is to follow each 100% instruction with an exaggerated Be Seen Looking scan across all desks in the classroom. The purpose of this is to ensure every student knows that we are following up on the instructions; it’s important, all of us need to do it and our teacher is making sure we are all ready.

Get ready to stop writing…

100% of us stop writing now.

[Be Seen Looking]

The purpose of being seen looking is that we identify any students not ready, for whatever reason, for us to move on. We need to correct them but we are still wanting to maintain the lesson flow. Therefore, this is where we start selecting from our range of Least Invasive Interventions. The two I would most commonly use are:

• Non-verbal intervention: “100% of us stop writing now”…[Be Seen Looking]…[‘stop’ hand signal to a student still writing]
• Anonymous individual correction: “100% of us stop writing now”…[Be Seen Looking]…”I need another 5%”

The aim of Be Seen Looking and those Least Invasive Interventions is to reduce the need for publicly highlighting an individual student who is not following the instruction. However, at this point, if we are still waiting, stating a student’s name is likely to be necessary in order to get 100%. It is crucial, though, that if this happens, it’s done swiftly and calmly with Economy of Language.

• Lightning-quick public correction: “100% of us stop writing now”…[Be Seen Looking]…”I need another 5%”…[student y, stop writing, thank you].

Get ready to stop writing…

100% of us stop writing now.

[Be Seen Looking, then Least Invasive Interventions]

100% pens down.

[Be Seen Looking, then Least Invasive Interventions]

100% tracking me.

[Be Seen Looking, then Least Invasive Interventions]

The above script might appear slow and a fairly significant time investment. My experience of watching and using 100% is that it enables particular classes previously slow to follow longer routines to have them broken down and then built back up to fluency. In a short space of time, the above script will be shifted to:

Get ready to stop writing…

100% of us put pens down now.

[Be Seen Looking]

100% tracking me.

[Be Seen Looking]

Amazing [class x], you once again did that so quickly, I am really impressed, let’s move on…

A shared T&L language that involves breaking behaviour down into small steps and then guiding students to mastery gives excellent opportunities for meaningful praise. This praise reinforces the social norms we are consciously building in our classrooms. Moving forwards, the 100% strategy will be a part of our Nova Hreod deliberate practice curriculum; a way of normalising the positive learning environment that we all want to see.